Notes · HistoryUK · A-Levels

Analysing change and continuity over time

Change and continuity are two of the second-order concepts through which A-Level History analyses the past. This chapter explains how to characterise change precisely — its pace, extent and direction — how to recognise continuity running alongside it, and how to build these judgements into a sustained argument, above all in the breadth (Component 1) essay.

4 sections~17 min reading time3 competenciesLevel Foundation 1 · Standard 2 · Advanced 1

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Exam profile

AO1 · Analyse and evaluate patterns of change and continuity across a period, reaching a substantiated judgementAO1 · Distinguish the pace, extent, direction and significance of change, and identify turning pointsAO3 · Recognise that different historians characterise the same period's change differently

Operators:analyseassessto what extenthow farhow significantexplain

basic level

AS-Level expects you to identify clear changes and continuities across a period and support them with accurate detail.

higher level

The full A-Level expects you to weigh the pace and extent of change against underlying continuity and to sustain a line of argument to a judgement about how much really changed.

Depth

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Contents · 4 sections

Analysing change and continuity over time

What historians mean by change and continuity#

FoundationDfE GCE History subject content - second-order conceptsAQA 7042 Component 1

Dimensions of change in a period

Fig. 1Assess change and continuity dimension by dimension before drawing them together — the answer usually differs by theme.

Change and continuity are a pair of second-order (or 'disciplinary') concepts — the analytical tools historians use to organise the substantive content of a period, as opposed to the events themselves. To say that something changed is to compare its state at two or more points in time and find a difference; to say that something continued is to find that, across the same span, it stayed essentially the same. A-Level History is built on these comparisons: the breadth study in particular asks you to survey roughly a century or more and to characterise how much, and in what ways, a country or a theme altered across it.

The single most important idea in this topic is that change and continuity are not opposites that cancel out but two threads that run side by side. In almost every period some things transform while others persist, and the strongest analysis holds both in view at once. When Henry VIII broke England's link with Rome in the 1530s the jurisdiction of the Church changed profoundly, yet the parish, the Mass for most of the population, and the social role of religion continued with far less disturbance for years afterwards. A good historian does not simply announce 'this was a period of great change'; they specify what changed, what did not, and how the two relate.

It helps to break a period into dimensions — political, economic, social, religious, cultural, and (for a country's external position) diplomatic or military — and to assess change and continuity in each separately before drawing them together. A regime may change its political institutions dramatically while the underlying structure of the economy or the pattern of daily life alters only slowly. Separating the strands prevents the lazy generalisation that a whole century was 'a time of change' or 'a time of stability', and lets you show that the answer differs by theme, which is exactly the kind of qualified, discriminating argument examiners reward.

Finally, change and continuity are relative to the question asked and the timescale chosen. A development that looks revolutionary over ten years can look like a passing episode over a hundred; a continuity that seems total across a decade can be shown, over a longer span, to be the beginning of slow erosion. Because the breadth study deliberately takes the long view, you must train yourself to zoom out — to ask not only 'what happened?' but 'across the whole period, in which direction was this theme moving, and did it move steadily or in fits and starts?'

Worked example

Separating change from continuity in one development

In one or two sentences each, identify what changed and what continued when the monasteries were dissolved in England in the later 1530s.

Identify the change
The dissolution removed a whole institution: monastic houses were closed, their lands and wealth transferred to the Crown and then sold, and a major landowner and centre of religious life disappeared from the countryside. This was a rapid and largely irreversible political-religious change.
Identify the continuity
Yet for ordinary parishioners, the rhythm of parish worship, the calendar of holy days and much traditional belief continued with little immediate change; the social structure of the village and the practice of everyday religion altered far more slowly than the ownership of land.
Relate the two
So a single event carried a sharp institutional change and a marked social continuity at the same time — precisely the doubled picture strong analysis captures.

Result: The dissolution shows change (institutional, economic) and continuity (popular worship, social structure) running together — the analytical point to make about almost any development.

Typical mistakes

Describing events in sequence (narrative) instead of analysing whether and how much things changed.
Ignoring continuity altogether — a question about change is also, implicitly, a question about what stayed the same.

Active revision

Choose any century-long period you have studied and list, for the political, economic, social and religious dimensions, one major change and one major continuity in each.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for history (Department for Education)

Measuring change: pace, extent and turning points#

StandardDfE GCE History subject content - change/continuityAQA 7042 Component 1

Turning points in a period of change

Fig. 2Change is often uneven and can reverse: English religious policy swung sharply between the 1530s and 1559 before settling — each marked point is a candidate turning point.

Once you have established that something changed, the analytical work is to characterise the change precisely, and this means asking three questions. First, its pace: was the change rapid (a sudden break) or gradual (a slow evolution)? Second, its extent: was it profound, reaching deep into the structures of power or society, or superficial, touching only the surface? Third, its direction: was the movement towards greater central power or less, greater prosperity or decline, more religious uniformity or more diversity? Vague answers say 'things changed a lot'; strong answers say 'political authority was centralised rapidly and deeply in the 1530s, but the change in popular belief was slow and shallow by comparison'.

A turning point is a moment after which the direction or pace of change is decisively altered — the hinge on which a period turns. Historians debate turning points because identifying one is itself an argument: to call the break with Rome, or the 1917 revolutions, or the Wall Street Crash a turning point is to claim that things ran differently before and after it. To argue that a moment was a genuine turning point, you must show both what it ended and what it began, and ideally weigh it against rival candidates. Not every dramatic event is a turning point: some crises are absorbed and leave the underlying trajectory unchanged.

It is useful to distinguish a turning point from a watershed and from a mere landmark. A landmark is a memorable event that nonetheless changes little; a turning point genuinely redirects the trend; a watershed is a turning point so decisive that the period is conventionally divided by it. Testing a candidate event against these categories forces you to argue about significance rather than simply to narrate. The same discipline lets you challenge the framing of a question: if asked whether a particular year was 'the' turning point, you can argue that change was in fact already under way, so the year confirmed rather than caused the new direction.

Beware of two traps that flatten this analysis. The first is assuming that change is always progress: movements can go backwards (a reforming regime can be followed by reaction), and 'change' should never be read as a synonym for 'improvement'. The second is treating the whole of a long period as uniform. Change is usually uneven — fast in some decades, almost frozen in others — and the best breadth answers map that unevenness, identifying the phases when a theme moved quickly and the phases when it stalled or reversed.

Worked example

Testing a candidate turning point

How would you decide whether the Elizabethan Religious Settlement of 1559 was a genuine turning point in English religious history?

State what it ended
The Settlement ended the sharp oscillation of the previous quarter-century — Protestant under Edward VI, Catholic under Mary I — by fixing a national Church under the Crown with a set liturgy.
State what it began
It began a durable, if contested, Protestant establishment that lasted, in its essentials, for generations; after 1559 the direction of official religion no longer reversed with each monarch.
Weigh against continuity and rivals
Against this, one can argue the break with Rome in 1534 was the deeper turning point and 1559 only confirmed it, and that religious division continued beneath the settled surface. Acknowledging this makes the judgement stronger, not weaker.

Result: 1559 can be defended as a turning point because it ended reversibility and began a lasting establishment — but the argument is only convincing once weighed against 1534 and against continuing division.

Typical mistakes

Equating change with progress — periods can move backwards, and reform can be followed by reaction.
Treating a whole century as uniform, missing that change is fast in some phases and stalled in others.

Active revision

For a period you have studied, name one event you would defend as a turning point and one dramatic event you would argue was only a landmark, and justify the distinction.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for history (Department for Education)

Similarity and difference across a period#

StandardDfE GCE History subject content - similarity/differenceAQA 7042 Component 1

Comparing two sub-periods

Fig. 3A comparison lays out shared ground (continuity) and distinctive features (change) — the overlap is as important as the differences.

Change and continuity have a close cousin among the second-order concepts: similarity and difference. Where change and continuity compare a theme across time, similarity and difference compare two things — two reigns, two revolutions, two phases of a period, or the experience of two groups within the same society. Much breadth analysis is comparative in this way: to judge how far a country changed across a century, you often compare its condition at the start with its condition at the end, or compare one sub-period with another, and ask how alike or unlike they were.

The discipline is to compare like with like along explicit criteria rather than describing each thing in turn. If you are comparing two rulers' methods of government, decide your criteria first — say, their relationship with representative institutions, their financial policy, their handling of religion — and then assess each ruler against each criterion. This produces genuine comparison ('both centralised power, but one did so through Parliament and the other around it') rather than two separate mini-essays laid side by side, which is one of the commonest weaknesses in comparative answers.

Comparison also guards against a false sense of uniqueness. Regimes and crises that seem singular often share structural features with others; noticing the similarity can be as illuminating as noticing the difference. At the same time, superficial similarity can hide deep difference — two governments may both call themselves republics, or both use terror, yet differ profoundly in aim, scale and context. Strong analysis states the similarity and then immediately qualifies it, or states the difference and then concedes the shared ground, so that the comparison is always two-sided.

Similarity and difference feed directly into judgements about change. If the beginning and end of a period are markedly different, that is evidence of substantial change; if they are broadly similar despite intervening upheaval, that is evidence of underlying continuity — the storms passed and the structure held. Framing a change question as a comparison of the two ends of the period is often the clearest way to reach a measured verdict on how much really altered.

Worked example

A criterion-by-criterion comparison

Sketch how you would compare the methods of government of two successive rulers, using explicit criteria.

Fix the criteria
Choose comparable criteria: (a) relationship with Parliament, (b) financial policy, (c) religious policy. Deciding these first is what turns description into comparison.
Assess each ruler against each
For (a): did each rule with or around representative institutions? For (b): did each live within its means or provoke conflict over money? For (c): did each pursue uniformity or toleration? Answer the same question of both rulers in turn.
Draw a two-sided conclusion
Conclude with a qualified verdict: for example, that both centralised authority (similarity) but differed in whether they worked through Parliament or against it (difference), so their governments were alike in aim but unlike in method.

Result: By fixing criteria and assessing both rulers against each, the comparison yields a precise, two-sided judgement instead of two parallel descriptions.

Typical mistakes

Writing two separate descriptions side by side and calling it a comparison — genuine comparison runs criterion by criterion.
Mistaking a shared label (both 'republics', both 'reformers') for a real similarity of substance.

Active revision

Pick two rulers or regimes from a period you have studied. Set out three criteria for comparison and, for each, state one similarity and one difference between them.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for history (Department for Education)

Building a change and continuity essay to a judgement#

AdvancedAQA 7042 Component 1 breadth essay (AO1)DfE GCE History subject content

Structure of a change and continuity essay

Fig. 4A thematic structure keeps the essay analytical: a thesis, one paragraph per theme (each weighing change against continuity), and a discriminating judgement.

The breadth essay — an AO1 question worth 25 marks in Component 1 — is where change and continuity analysis is assessed most directly. Such questions are typically framed as 'To what extent did X change...', 'How far...', or 'Assess the view that...'. The command is an invitation to weigh: the examiner is not asking you to prove change or disprove it, but to judge how much and in what respects, and to argue that judgement consistently. The mark scheme rewards a sustained, analytical line of reasoning that reaches a substantiated judgement — not coverage for its own sake.

Structure the essay thematically, not chronologically. A chronological narrative marching through the decades almost always slides into description; a thematic structure — one paragraph per dimension of change, or per factor — keeps you analytical. Open with a thesis that answers the question directly and previews the line of argument (for example, that change was substantial in one respect but limited in another, so the overall verdict is qualified). Then take each theme in turn, and within each paragraph assess both the change and the continuity, supported by precise, accurate detail across the whole period — not just from one end of it.

The engine of a high-level essay is the sustained argument: every paragraph should refer back to the question and advance the same overall case, rather than offering a series of unconnected points. Use the topic sentence of each paragraph to state your mini-judgement on that theme ('Politically, the change was profound and lasting...'; 'Socially, by contrast, continuity dominated...'), then substantiate it, then link it back. The examiner should be able to read your topic sentences alone and follow your whole argument. This is what distinguishes a Level 5 answer from a merely knowledgeable one.

Reach a genuine judgement in the conclusion — and, ideally, prepare it throughout. Weak conclusions restate the question or sit on the fence; strong ones deliver a clear, qualified verdict that follows from the body ('Overall, the period saw decisive political change but marked social continuity, so it is more accurately described as a political than a social transformation'). The judgement should discriminate: it says which changes mattered most and why, rather than concluding blandly that 'there was both change and continuity'. Coverage of the whole chronological span, precise support, and a consistent line of argument are the three things that carry the marks.

Worked example

Planning a 'to what extent did it change?' essay

Plan a top-band answer to: 'To what extent did England change politically, religiously and socially across the sixteenth century?'

Thesis
Argue a qualified line: the century brought profound political and religious change (the Crown's power over the Church, a Protestant establishment) but slower social change (the structure of landed society and daily life persisted) — so it was more a political-religious than a social transformation.
Theme 1 - political
Topic sentence: political change was deep and lasting. Support: the Crown's assertion of supremacy over the Church and the growth of its administrative reach, sustained across the reigns. Then note the continuity of monarchy itself and of Parliament's forms.
Theme 2 - religious
Topic sentence: religious change was real but contested and uneven. Support: the swing from Rome to Protestantism, reversed under Mary and settled under Elizabeth. Note the continuity of popular belief and local practice beneath official change.
Theme 3 - social
Topic sentence: social change was the most limited. Support: the hierarchy of landed society, the parish and the patterns of ordinary life continued, even as landownership shifted with the dissolution. This is the continuity that qualifies the verdict.
Judgement
Conclude decisively: change was greatest in politics and religion and least in society, so the century is best described as a transformation of the state and the Church resting on a broadly continuous social order.

Result: A thematic plan with a qualified thesis, mini-judgements in each topic sentence and a discriminating conclusion — the shape of a Level 5 breadth essay.

Typical mistakes

Writing a chronological narrative that describes events instead of analysing the degree of change.
Ending with a fence-sitting conclusion ('there was both change and continuity') that fails to say which mattered most.

Active revision

To what extent did the position of the monarchy change across a period of at least a century that you have studied? Plan a thematic answer with a thesis, three thematic paragraphs and a judgement.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA AS and A-level History (7041 / 7042) specification (AQA) · GCE AS and A level subject content for history (Department for Education)

References & sources

Sources

Department for Education

GCE AS and A level subject content for history

AQA

AQA AS and A-level History (7041 / 7042) specification

Analysing change and continuity over time

4 sections~17 min reading time3 competenciesLevel Foundation 1 · Standard 2 · Advanced 1

Analysing change and continuity over time

Key points

Separating change from continuity in one development

Key points

Testing a candidate turning point

Key points

A criterion-by-criterion comparison

Key points

Planning a 'to what extent did it change?' essay

Sources

Analysing change and continuity over time

Key points

Separating change from continuity in one development

Key points

Testing a candidate turning point

Key points

A criterion-by-criterion comparison

Key points

Planning a 'to what extent did it change?' essay

Sources